Tag Archives: Windows Live Photo Gallery

When importing photos from a camera, Windows Live Photo Gallery, in the default mode, creates a sub-folder for each group of photos on the camera. The import dialog looks like the illustration here. The photos on the camera are presented in groups, ordered by date and time, usually one group per day. The grouping is adjustable. There is an “Enter a name” box for each group, see the red pointer in the illustration. If a name for the group is entered, the import procedure will create a sub-folder by that name.

If no group name is specified, a sub-folder is created with the date when the photos were taken as the name followed by a number. For most of us, this is just fine. But what do you do if you don’t want sub-folders, but all the photos imported into one folder? Can that be done?

The process described above is for the default setting in Windows Live Photo Gallery. You can change the way photos are imported in the Live Photo Gallery Options menu.

Click the blue File tab, then Options. Click the Import tab in the options dialog.

Click on the Folder name: selection, it is probably “Name”. The last item in the drop-down menu is (None). Click on this, then click OK.

When folder name “(None)” is selected, no sub-folders will be made and all photos will be imported into the folder specified in “Import to:”. Note the Browse button which allows you to specify any folder on your system for storing your imported photos.

On occasion you will get a dialog that says “0 new photos and videos were found” when you try to import pictures from your camera. This happens if you already have imported those photos, even though you might have deleted or moved the pictures on the computer.

Can you re-import the photos? You can, provided that you did not erase them on the camera. We are assuming here that you have set up your computer to use Windows Live Gallery to import photos from your camera. Just click the Next button (see illustration). In the next window you will see the photos on your camera arranged by date. It will say “0 items selected in 0 groups”. Note that the check box in front of the groups is not checked.

Click on the group check box that you wish to import again. There is also a “Select all” option. Make sure you have selected just the ones you wish to import once more. Click Import and the process starts.

While the photos are being imported you will see the progress in a dialog like the one shown here. Note the check box with the legend “Erase after importing”. This means “erase from the camera after the photos have been imported to the computer”. I always leave that unchecked, which is also the default. This way the photos stay on the camera.

So what happens if you already have the photos on your computer? A new set will be imported, if the file name already exists, the import process will add a number in parenthesis at the end of the file name for the new file. You will wind up with duplicated photos. No harm will be done to photos that are already on your computer. Of course you can delete the duplicates.

Sometimes you need to re-organize your picture folders and may wish to move a sub-folder up so it is on par with other folders. Here is an illustration:

On the left the folder “Bob” is inside folder “Ann”. You can tell by the little arrowhead. In fact, until you expand (click on) folder Ann you cannot see folder Bob in the navigation pane.

To move it so it is on par with – at the same level as – folder Ann, proceed as follows: Drag the folder to the name of the folder where you want it. In this illustration we want folder Bob to be inside My Pictures. So it is dragged to the My Pictures folder name. Notice the little note (screen tip) that says “Move to My Pictures”. When it says the correct folder name, drop it (let go the mouse button). You have moved the folder.

You can use this procedure to move any folder to be inside any other folder, even inside sub-folders.

Sometimes the procedure will not succeed, such as when a folder is open in an application. Just close the application and try again.

You can reorganize your folders in the navigation pane of Windows Live Photo Gallery or in the navigation pane of Windows Explorer. (Do not have both open at the same time, see warning above.)

Windows Live Photo Gallery together with Windows Live Mail provides “Photo Email” for sharing pictures in an efficient and pleasant way. I described the feature a while back (links below). But sometimes you might want to send pictures as attachments to an email.

Steps for sending photos as attachments

In Windows Live Photo Gallery, select the photos. Click the text part (or the down arrow) of the Photo email command. On the little drop-down menu click “Send photos as attachments”. See the illustration here.

Next you will be offered to specify the image size to be sent. The default size is 1024 by 768 pixels (the maximum dimensions, if an actual dimension is smaller that will be retained). You can select Original size or several other sizes.

After you have clicked the size you want click Attach.

Your default mail client “new message” window will open with the photos already shown as attachments.

If Windows Live Mail is your default client, it will come up with the Photo Album Tools tab active and showing that the photos are attached. You have the option of changing to a photo email instead of sending them as attachments.

The Live Mail “New message” window permits you to change from photo email to the attach method even if you started out specifying the photo email option.

The “paper clip” icon in the “Album style” group specifies “attach”. Clicking on any of the other styles makes the email a photo email.

The illustrations here show the options in the Photo Album Tools tab.

To make the tab visible click on the photo layout in the message area of your email.

NOTE:

When sending pictures as a photo email or by attachment, the Windows Live Photo Gallery “publish” options are not applied. Any metadata in the image files will be retained in the photos and sent to the recipient.

If you do not wish to share such data remove it from the file before sending it.

On the recipients side

The recipient of the email with photos attached gets the message and all the attachments. That is the time-consuming and often annoying aspect of attachments, since they are downloaded to the recipients computer before the recipient can see the email.

In Windows Live Mail, attached photos are shown by small thumbnails (except for very large files). To save the attached photos the recipient can right-click and select the appropriate action.

When using Hotmail in a browser, similar thumbnails are displayed. There is a download option shown on each, or all the photos can be downloaded as a zip file.

There is a nice viewing feature called “Hotmail active view” which permits viewing the individual photo, or a slide show of all attached photos. This allows the recipient to see and enjoy the pictures without having to download them.

Your camera writes GPS geographic coordinates to the metadata of your photos. This location information may be stripped out during upload to the web or might not show due to your privacy settings in your Picasa Web Albums.

First make sure that there is indeed location data in your picture files. Check your camera settings to make sure that the GPS data is recorded. After importing photos to your computer, right-click on a file name, select Properties. On the Details tab scroll down. GPS data is shown below the Advanced Photo section and above the File section. It should look somewhat like the image on the right.

If you are using Windows Live Photo Gallery to upload your files to your Picasa Web Albums, check the Publish settings. Click the blue File tab, select Options, then click the Publish tab.

Make sure that the “Include all file details except…” option is selected.

Note that any boxes checked means that the information is removed from the file before it is uploaded. So make sure that Location information is not checked.

If you use another program to upload your files, check its settings to make sure that the GPS data is not removed. Many programs remove such data by default to protect the users.

Once you have made sure that the information is uploaded, sign in to your Picasa Web Albums. In the upper right click on “Settings” or the little gear symbol (the appearance is different in some browsers), click on Photo settings.

On the Settings page, click the Privacy and Permissions tab.

On this page you can specify a number of options. To display the location data, click on Automatically map photos if they contain location data so the check mark shows. Click Save changes.

Your photo locations should now be displayed for all photos that contain GPS data.

Warning!

Be extremely careful about showing location or other information that can be used by criminals to bring harm to you or others. Clear GPS and other sensitive metadata from pictures that could be misused before uploading them.

This will bring up a window with an address entry box and a message box. Enter the recipients email address and also enter any message that you wish to accompany the link.

The dialog looks like this:

You can enter multiple addresses to send the link to any number of recipients.

NOTE: If your album sharing is set to Everyone (public) the recipients will not need to sign in with a Windows Live ID.

If the album is set to one of the other sharing options, the recipient will need to sign in using the email address, the one you use in sending the link, as the Live ID. If the recipient does not have that address set as a Live ID it can be done from the sign in page.

The recipient receives an email with this type of message:

When the recipient clicks View album a browser window is launched and the slide show comes up.

If the slide show was prepared with Windows Live Photo Gallery > Slide show > Share slide show > SkyDrive a movie of the slide show will be uploaded to SkyDrive. This will be a “My movie.wmv” file created by Live Movie Maker. The email link will start the slide show and play it through.

If the link is to an album of individual picture files, the link will start with the first picture. The recipient needs to click the “play” button to play the slide show. See illustration here: